How to Create a YouTube Channel in 2026 (Step by Step)

In this video, I'm going to show you how to create a YouTube channel in 2026. We're going to walk through everything you need to know step by step, from how to create a YouTube account to the key YouTube settings that most people miss so that you can grow your YouTube channel faster. So right off the bat, you're going to go over to your channel. If you go up to this top button, there will be a button— instead of it saying View Your Channel, it will say Create a Channel. Now since I already have a channel here, I'm going to go down to Settings. And then I can create a new channel right here. You're going to see first and foremost is we want to create a profile picture. Now I use Canva for most everything design-wise in my business. So I have a little headshot photo right here of my lovely smiling face. And this is just a 400 by 400 size. So add some kind of headshot. You can do background remover if you're on the pro plan of Canva, but get it looking however you want. And then what we're going to do is we're going to download this. So I'm going to keep that white background. We'll select a photo. And then you can go from your computer. So download this, hit Done. And the next thing we want to do is add your name. So this is a big debate on what you should do for your name, depending on you and what you're trying to do. Using just your name works fine. But you can also use whatever your business name is, but I would choose one of the two. It's either your business name or just your name. Quite frankly, the name of your channel is not going to make or break your channel. The biggest thing that can be helpful is if you go over to a video, let's say, and then down the bottom you leave a comment and your name shows up right here, or your and it says like Profit Your Knowledge, and I leave a really thoughtful comment for someone, then people could read that and be like, oh, Profit Your Knowledge, that's kind of interesting. And then they'll click over and see my channel. But again, the name isn't what's going to sell people. That might get people interested, but what's really going to grow your channel is the content that you put out, the consistency, knowing who your audience is and serving them. All right. So if you're really hung up on this, this is stuff that you can change down the road. So for now, I'm just going to say like James Allen, Profit Your Knowledge, because I already have Profit Your Knowledge. And then down here is your handle. So this is where you can change it. You can leave it as James Allen. Profit Your Knowledge is already taken from my current channel, so I'll just say like Test. Your name can be different than the handle because again, inside the comments, your handle is going to show up, but then your name is going to be shown right here just on your normal channel. So again, this isn't going to really make or break your channel. This is my client Jason. He, for his handle, just did Jason-Niehoff. 'cause that's his name, Jason Niehoff. So don't overthink it, just understand that what's really gonna grow the channel isn't gonna be the name and your handle, and you can change them down the road, which I'll show you how to do. So once you get all this set up, we're gonna create your channel. Now once your channel is set up, one thing you'll notice is that my profile picture that I added is not there. That can take a little bit of time for it to officially kick in. But the first thing that we wanna do is not create a video. We wanna take care of our channel, get everything nice and set up. So what we'll do is click on this button, Customize Channel. And that's going to take us over to our YouTube Creator Studio. Then you can go down to customization right here. So we're just going to run through the different prompts. First and foremost, we have your banner image. Banner images get weird with the different pixels and the size that they want from you. They're going to tell you it's 2048 by 1152. And what that really is, is this length. Of this whole thing. So it's weird with YouTube banners, which is why I have this little diagram here, because this is what the— my YouTube banner actually looks like. See how it's like floating and it's got all this dead space around it? This is my actual channel, and you'll see that this looks awesome. It looks clean. It works on mobile with this extra space. But this is what it looks like from the actual design. So that's why I'm going to give you this again. I'm going to link this right down below this video just so you can make sure that you get this right, because what you want to do is if we copy this, you want it to be sitting right in this space and you may need to adjust this a little bit. Like you saw, it was kind of floating a bit. Just make sure that when you do upload it, it looks nice and seamless. It's not like there's dead space under me or that my head is chopped off or anything like that, because this middle space is optimized for desktop minimum and mobile. I just make sure that it works for both desktop and mobile. And yeah, you know, obviously you can optimize for TVs as well because people do watch YouTube on their TVs, but I really optimize for desktop and mobile because that's primarily what my audience is on. And if you look at this on mobile, you'll see that it cuts off right here. So that extra meat on the side is still gonna look, uh, really clean. You just won't see that extra meat on the side. It would just be this nice clean banner image. All right. So again, I'll link this down below. You can always download this same thing by just going to Google and say YouTube banner template. And it will give you that same kind of thing. But I'm going to delete all of this, and then what we're going to do is we are going to download the whole image. When you get it all set up, what you'll do, you know, when you get this all built in here is you're going to get looking good, and then you can just delete that dead space, click on the background, and then you can add whatever kind of color you want. Do like a gray is what I did, and that looked really good. So once you have your banner image downloaded, we're going to click here on upload. And you'll see, looks nice and clean. I'm not chopped off or anything weird like that. And then we'll hit done and it fits in perfectly. So we have that we have your profile picture as well. And then down here, again, anytime you want, you can always go to the YouTube Studio and hit customization and then you can change your name you can change your handle anytime you want in here. So next up, we have your description under your channel. Again, this isn't like— this is not going to make or break your channel, but it's good to have there just in case people want to learn a little bit more. On my current channel, if you click More, you will see the description. I will sit this here, and, uh, you can pause this, you can zoom in, whatever you want, and model what I do. Or just go to my channel and model it. Don't copy it word for word because that's weird, but you can follow the same kind of flow. Like I'm on a mission to do this. I went from struggling. Now I'm, I've helped all these people do this. Here's what kind of videos I talk about or what I cover on my channel. All right. So we will just take this for the sake of this, plug it in, make sure that it's under 1,000 characters. Very, very important. And then if you want to, if you are, you know, having a channel, it's gonna be in different languages. You can add a language. You'll have the original language or the translation language. And then if you, you know, are in Spanish, you can click right here and then enter the channel name, the description again, and it will translate it over to Spanish. So most people, you don't really need to do this. Just stick with your primary language. But it is nice to know that it's there. You'll have your channel URL. This is what you can share across social media and different platforms. And speaking of social media, we also have links right here. Links are really helpful, especially if you are trying to use this YouTube channel to grow an online business, you wanna educate people online, make content that brings people or promotes your business or speaking career, anything like that. For your links here, you wanna promote to some kind of lead magnet that grows your email list or just point over to your website. So the two links that I have are to my website, of course, and then this one, Turn Your Ideas Into Income. So this is what I mean by a landing page where they can opt in. And then, you know, you have an email list. That you start to grow, and then you can message those people, build your email list. They can unsubscribe at any time. While we're here, if you are enjoying this so far, you've watched my other videos and you would like to get coached by me for 5 days to help you take whatever idea you have for this YouTube channel and turn it into a legitimate and predictable income stream, then I want to invite you to my Ideas to Income Challenge. To see when the next challenge date is, just go to profityourknowledge.com/challenge and I will see you at the next challenge. All right, so I mentioned my client Jason, who's doing great with YouTube, had his first video hit over 16,000 views in just 11 days. And for his banner, we kept it super simple. You know, with mine, it says build a 6-figure online business sharing what you know. His, we just said learn futures trading. Just talk about what the benefit that people are getting by subscribing to your channel and watching your content really is. What are they gonna get by sticking around? This simple photo, just his name. And then he has a little description: guiding new futures traders to profitable, disciplined trading. That's all he said, because quite frankly, this isn't going to grow his channel. What is, is his quality of content and his consistency. For his links, we link to a checklist that he offers people. He also is offering people to book a free consultation for now and then over to his website. So this is helping Jason get leads on autopilot from YouTube to his business. And he's already made over $3,000 at this point with just 12 videos when he had 12. So for your external links, it could just be that you're pointing over to your website right now, or maybe even just to book a call with you. Next up, we have a contact information. So this is where you can put your email address. Now, this is totally optional on what you want to do. I personally do not put my email address. I used to, but I would get so many people messaging me saying, I'll help you grow your YouTube channel and just cold pitching me all the time. So that is kind of the downside of putting your email address. The upside is that if you want to do brand deals or partner with other businesses and brands, putting your email address here could be beneficial because they can reach out to you and say, hey, I love your channel, I'd love to do some kind of collaboration, and then you guys can do some business together. The ultimate failsafe that I'd recommend if you do want to put something here is just create a new Google account or some kind of email account that's like info@yournameorbusiness.com. That way your private email is not getting crowded with a bunch of cold email spam. Now the next thing is a video watermark. So if we watch any one of my videos, you will see this little watermark icon. Some people like to do the YouTube logo, but you can totally customize this. And if you don't put anything, I don't think anything shows up. So I just did it just kind of as a failsafe. But right here it says an image that's 150 by 150 pixels is recommended. Use a PNG GIF, no animations. JPEG, etc., 1 megabyte or less. So in Canva, I created this design like 3 years ago. Super simple. It is a 100 by 100. You can always go to resize or hit custom size and then you can build this out. It's literally just a blue square with text that says subscribe. And that's all that I did. So I will just download this. I did a transparent background, so you're not going to see this white. And then we'll hit download. Go over here to customize, hit upload. Boom. Looks good. Excellent. And then you can choose at the end of the video if you want this to show up, custom start time, like halfway or in the first 30 seconds. I just choose the entire video and leave it at that. So we've officially set up your channel. We have your banner image, profile picture, your description, any kind of links that ideally lead over to your business or email list. Or any kind of products that you sell. Most people are just going to leave it at that and then start posting. What I want to do with you is make sure that you are fully set up so that you have the best chance of winning with your YouTube channel. So we're going to do is inside of the YouTube Studio, we're going to go down to the Settings button right here and then run through a couple of these settings just as a final little touch to make sure that you're good to go. So first one is General. This is your currency. This is really big when you start to get monetized. I just leave mine on USD. Because I'm in the US. If you want to make sales with USD, you can leave it on USD or you can change it to whatever currency you want. Next up, we have channel. So you're going to go through some basic information right here. We'll do your country of residence, United States, and then right here is your keywords. So with your keywords, these are the keywords that your channel is all about. So for example, with Jason, his whole thing is about futures trading. Now, what we can do and what I like to do is go over to vidIQ, great tool. There's a free version and it would be fine for this. And what you'll do is go over to keywords and then, you know, in Jason's case, we could say like futures trading, really good search volume, low competition, it's a great keyword, which is why he's doing very well. Then what we can do is this is like what his channel's about, is futures trading. So that's the keyword you would put in. Then we'll go over to related keywords and from here you can just choose the ones that make sense to you. Futures trading basics. How do futures trading work? So we'll get like 20, plug them in, and then we have to just get rid of a few of them. Boom, 480, totally fine. And then you could add in like your name or something like that if you want and then hit save. So once you've got your overall channel tags, then we can go over to advanced settings. And then from here it'll ask you like, is your channel made for kids? Most of us, it's not unless you like are— think about this as like if your channel is directly for kids, like you're doing toy unboxing and stuff like that, or it's like recordings of kids' songs and stuff like that. If it's not any of that, just say no, this channel is not for kids. You can choose automatic captions, which I think is worthwhile. Advertisements you can disable or enable interest-based ads. If you're trying to monetize and you are going to want to get paid through AdSense, which is when people click on the ads on your video or that are shown on your video to them, you want interest-based ads because these are going to be based on whatever the person is interested in. The more ads they click on your videos, the more money that you will make. So I think it's worth having it on if you're trying to make money from AdSense. Allow people to clip your content. Yes, it means people can share your videos, which I think is really big. Video quality enhancements, I would leave those on. And then third-party training, I'm going to leave that off personally. So next up, this is really importantly a feature eligibility. So standard features, intermediate features. This is really big. If you click here, you're going to see by enabling this, you're going to have to give them your phone number over to Google, which is totally worth it. But by doing this, you will be able to create custom thumbnails. Which is super big because that means that you'll create better packaging and then people will actually click on your videos. You can have live streaming, and if you want to have videos over 15 minutes or longer than 15 minutes, all very, very important, especially when you're trying to build a business and more trust with your YouTube channel. So I'd verify your phone number, make sure that this all gets turned on, and then the advanced features: appeal content ID claims, external links in video descriptions— incredibly important, especially for a business. Because we are trying to move people from YouTube over to our email list or to our products or to our website. So we want to make sure that we can have those links down in the description or in the comments sections as well. So in order to enable the advanced features, which you want to have on, you have to first enable by giving your phone number the intermediate features. So make sure all this is turned on for sure. Next, we'll go over to upload defaults. So I'll show you what this looks like on my actual channel. Go over to settings. Upload Defaults. So I leave the title part blank and then down for the description, I do something where it's just kinda like a template that I use. I have my VA upload my YouTube videos for me, so this is more for them. But at the top of your description, you wanna paste whatever link you shared from the video. So if you look below this, you'll see whatever link I promoted, which is my Ideas to Income Challenge, is right there front and center at the top. And then underneath that, I'm gonna have a little description about what the video's about with the right keywords, et cetera. And then I'll have Get More Support where I can have some other links. If I promoted this one, which is my challenge, then that's gonna be at the very top. And then I will delete that from under Get More Support, which is what I have. And then people can either check out my Kajabi free trial or they can work with me one-on-one and apply for a spot there. And then lastly, I have timestamps. Very, very important for creating a good user experience. So I make sure that I automatically have 0:00 and then introduction, because this is what kickstarts the timestamps. If I didn't have 0:00, then the timestamps wouldn't actually work and it would not create those really cool chapters that you see right below this video. Visibility, you can leave, and then tags, uh, I would just recommend, if anything, add those extra tags. From the channel. You can add those over. There you have it, my friend. That is everything that you need to know to officially have your YouTube channel fully set up. And now we can start making YouTube videos. Like I said before, if your goal with this YouTube channel is to turn it into an actual business, you want to teach things online and get paid for, and you don't want this to just be some hobby that you have or be always be giving away free advice or letting people pick your brain. And first off, make sure that you come to the Ideas to Income Challenge because I'm going to actually be able to coach you live It's not prerecorded, and I can help you really refine this idea so that you have the best chance of actually making money from it. You do not need to have a ton of subscribers or some massive audience to start making some money online. If you watch this video next, I will break down the biggest mistakes that creators make when they try to earn an income on YouTube, and we'll also cover what you need to focus on instead if you actually wanna make money with a small channel. If you have any questions, leave a comment below. But as always, take what you learned here, get out there, make something happen. I'll see you in the next one.